I visited my relatives for a delayed Thanksgiving dinner this weekend. It was nice, we had six Ashley boys age eight and under, all with blonde or red hair. Plus, I was able to discuss with my father the nature of manual design, and a bit with my brother on reading comprehension.
Dad's had almost thirty years in computer programming, and for a long time was the 'Ask' guy when other programmers at his company were stumped, and has written a technical article, I feel comfortable giving him a 3@2 in Computer Programming. To say he has extensive experience with manuals would be an understatement.
So when he....
1. Posed an absolute limit of 8 steps in a checklist...
2. Agreed with me that focusing on your core mechanic that covered eighty percent of the situations you find yourself in was wise. And he said that for the other situations, you could delve into the manual...
Forex: He pointed out that in the new camera the Ladyfaire just got, you had a maybe four-step process of hit this button, then that button....and you had a finished product, a picture. And if you wanted to get complicated, then you could go to the manual.
3. Agreed that a set of checklists focusing on core processes that get used most of the time was good.
4. Pointed out that even in computer manuals where the above is done, that they still make a huge poster with big letters saying STEP ONE: DO THIS FIRST; STEP TWO....
I took this seriously. And when I look at p. 45 with a twelve step checklist, I wince.
My brother, Dr. almost cubed Gary, said that sometimes after ten pages of closely argued theological study on some particularly difficult topic he sometimes doesn't even know what he himself believes. And he talked about how Isaiah was actually too big to do a class on because almost no one ('maybe some guy out there has a five thousand page commentary on Isaiah, and really understands it') understands it.
And then I look at the thirty pages of the Combat chapter, and I realize Multiverser was designed for Real Smart People. And maybe the fact that it seems the average IQ of my players hovers around 140 is not an accident. But it is a problem. Don't get me wrong, I like gaming with smart people. I suppose you could market Multiverser as 'Roleplaying for the Gifted', but it is a limited market even among the smarter than average rpg crowd.
I think we might be able to make Multiverser comprehensible to the non-gifted.
Let me introduce the third ghost....Breton Stron. He's a smart guy. I disagree with him frequently, but fact two doesn't change fact one.
Breton wrote a positive review of Multiverser in which he said....I read the game for the first fifty pages, and was confused until I realized it was not the type of dimensional travelling game I thought it was.
Three points arise from this:
1. Fifty pages?! You're very lucky. A typical novelist has at most eleven pages to sell his customer in the bookstore.
2. Multiverser really is a unique, and dazzling set of ideas that it is shocking and innovative even to the experienced. Yea for the Home Team!
3. Yet it took Fifty pages for a smart guy to understand what MV was about. That's bad.
Now, let's see if we can put together some recommendations based on these concepts.
Inside the Front Cover:
Big Poster Time (although not actually a Big Poster, but pictures would be...essential.):
1. You NEED a Copy of the Rules. The BIG, BLACK BOOK of Multiverser: The Game (r). You are holding one in your sweaty hands. Buy it immediately to produce joy, and change your life.
2. You NEED three (3) ten-sided dice also known as 3d10. You can buy these at most any hobby, or gaming store, or wherever you bought your Big Black Book. You can also buy it at Multiverser.com where we have cooked up a special set of "Infinity Dice".
3. You NEED one to seven Players, and one designated Referee. Gather up your friends, and maybe enemies. Some bottles of soda (pop, or Coke(r)) and chips to set out on a clean tabletop if you can manage that would be nice, but not necessary. Likewise, figurines, maps, and the rest of the neat toys can wait for later.
4. Read the "What is Multiverser" paragraph below this checklist. C'mon, its only a paragraph. It won't bite...much.
5. If you are a Player or a Referee, turn to the opposing page, that is Page One, and read "How to Make a Character". Referees will be given other reading assignments later (there may be pop quizzes, so pay attention! :) )
6. We at Valdron Press hope that you love your game. We look forward to any questions or suggestions you may have. You can contact us at ...
----We're going to solve Breton's problem second----
Multiverser: The Game(r) is a campaign-style* Role-playing Game*. Each player runs a character* who is a stand-in for themselves (Usually. You can do it otherwise. If so, see 'Alternate Character Creation Methods on Page XYZ). The doppleganger from a near-identical timeline suffers a Scriff* accident, and is 'infected'. He is propelled from his original timeline, and lost in a nigh-infinity of other realities or 'Verses'. Once he is expelled by being killed, or 'versed-out', he arrives in another material universe. In this new reality, the rules of nature may be different. Magic, psionics, and technology may individually be easier or harder on a thirty point scale. He is now immortal until versed-out, and then he starts anew, but with old skills and equipment* intact.
Multiverser is a skill-based game with a single die roll for attack success and damage. It used attribute checks for non-skill based rolls.
Some versers*, which is what a player character or doppleganger, is called have been to hundreds of worlds in thousands of years of life, and have become clearly superhuman. They could teach Bruce Lee martial arts, and Bruce Wayne something about being scary. But they all start as ordinary human beings who with courage and vision dare to become heroes.
Welcome to the Verse.
*=Go to the Glossary beginning on page XXZZ for more details.
Page One
Character Creation Checklist:
=============================
1. Get out a piece of paper OR download from Multiverser.com a character sheet. Write down your various names including the ones a god would know. Add a character description if you're playing online.
2. In each of the Thirteen Attributes running from Persuasion to Willpower which are described on Page QWY and QWU, decide if you would be the best person in that basic physical ability in a random group of fifty. If so, put 2@ by that attribute. All other attributes, put 1@ by them.
We are ignoring Education Level right now.
3. 1@5 is Human Average. So, go back to the Thirteen Attributes, and rank your Normal (1@) Attributes from 1-10. If you have any Superior Attributes, then rank them also from 1-10. Put this second ranking to the right of the '@' sign. For example: 1@5, or 1@9, or 1@10 (which then jumps to...) 2@1 to 2@3 and so forth, and tops out at 2@10 for a Human that has not been changed by genetic engineering or some other method.
4. The average Human Education Level on our Hi-tech Earth is 1@8 which is high school level. Some college is 2@1, a bachelor's ....
5. Then we step to the Derived Values which is not as hard as it sounds.
-Target Value (D + A + Intuition/3)
NOTE: I'm trying to avoid getting into what might be considered proprietary information so I won't go further and demonstrate all the Derived Values. I also may here and there drop out bits of data for the same reason.
I think this is excessive, but I understand mine is not the only opinion that matters.
As a further note, let me strongly suggest that the names of all the Attributes be modified so that one letter, or at most three letter abbreviations are usable. Intelligence and Intuition need a change in names.
Now back to the checklist.
6. Skills: Everything you can do is a skill. Driving a car, praying for rain, wiring the house for electricity, and using a pencil are all skills. Obviously you don't need to write down all of your hundreds of skills. Choose the ones that are most distinctive to you, or that you have special emphases in.
Decide if you are an Amateur*, a Professional*, or an Expert*. Rank your skill in that subset from 1-10 with 5 being average. So a 1@5 Amateur is your typical guy fiddling around with his car, trying to change its oil.
7. Equipment: Write down a list of items that you own, or that you could borrow without feeling you needed to ask. These items need to be unattached to any other thing that is not going with you. The total weight of all the items needs to be under 200 pounds.
You do not know that you are travelling extradimensionally. Choose whatever items that you will.
NOTE: For the Designers again...1) Any example in the book like the example I just used of a guy changing his tire (maybe not since its so short), or the example of the Architect making plastic steel needs to be italicized, and written in present tense in a 'you are there watching' mode.
2) There needs to be better advice by what standard to choose the equipment you carry with you unless you just want to blatantly sanction metagaming.
8. You are Done! Go snag yourself a cold Coke(r) if you're in the South, or a pop if you're from Joisey, or a soda if you're from anywhere else, and some of that microwave popcorn, and sit back. Your referee is going to want to look over your character sheet, and make lots of 'h'mmm' and 'okay' noises. Shortly after that you should be entering the Verse....
*=Go to the Glossary for more details. This begins at Page XYZ.
Page Two:
What's the Core Mechanic? The Most Core mechanic? The one that gets used the most? Perhaps in Multiverser, its the Skill Use CM, but I'm still going to say, lets run p.2 as the Combat Checklist.
Now, this checklist is truly simplified. It supposes two guys trying to kill each other with martial or close range ranged attacks.
Get the model of combat in their brain first, and then build on it with subsections that cover armor and cover, and all the rest. Also, most combat is sad to say, just that. Most d20 games are....
GM: "You enter a room, there are five orcs. What do you do?"
Player One: "We kill them!"
Player Two: "Yeah, maim and dismember!"
GM: "Roll for intiative."
And thats not entirely sad. I don't want to get too elitist. People like that style. Hey, I like it well enough myself. And I don't need much more complication to be a rabbit in clover myself.
Page Three: Skill Usage Checklist.
Page Four: Skill Acquisition Checklist (and since both are short) the Attribute Check Checklist on the same page.
Page Five: I don't want to be too over myself, but perhaps the 'Weapons Creation Checklist' I made. Also, we'd include Wodium's suggestion for one letter abreviations for weapons category damage.
Page Six: How to be a GM. A very simple and basic description of how to GM. At the end of this page, like a lot of the others here (and some 'links' are interspersed in the pages) will be a 'For more data, go to page so and so.' where there will be an example of how GM-ing works like MJ's description of Surprise in the Combat chapter.
Page 7-10: Ye Olde REALLY Basic World Design. This won't allow the beginning GM to make a prize-winning world. But it will teach him how to make a Gather, a Book-based world, a Fantasy world, a SF world, and a Modern Darkness world. It would enable him to make some fairly generic worlds with maybe some wiggle room to give him just a little variety.
This might need to be broken down further like into a "How to Set Your Biases" checklist or something, but I'm not sure on just how to slice the turkey so to speak.
---Where possible, short, italicized anecdotes will be stuck below the checklists. This follows the Army idea of "Tell them, tell them again, and when you're finishing up, tell them what you told them again." But you do this in different ways because some people absorb data from anecdotes that they don't from rules.
----Much of this might be put into a GM's Screen as well. If only someone did Print on Demand GM screens that would be really cool.
And thats the first ten pages of the book...as I would lay them out.
The next bit is explanations in greater detail which would be linked to the first ten pages. After that is general stuff like 'the agility of a tree'. And we should probably add here stuff like 1d10 charts...of course, Gygax put that in a Dungeonmaster's guide...all his various lists. I kind of wish we could do something like that.
And then there is the Skill charts. At the beginning of each skill Level there would be a short paragraph with instructions on how to go back, and find relevant data to the skills in that level.
I'd keep the Bias Intro sections, the four of them, as is.
Speaking as one of the least experienced gamers here, I like that concept. I'd like to add something though. How I was told to pick my starting equipment is "What you would take if you had to leave your home at a moment's notice, never come back, and you didn't know what would lie ahead." I think that might help some people better decide.
And I think that about covers it? Suggestions, comments....
Eric
Too much has already been published to change the names of Intellect and Intuition now. One of my old players abbreviated Intuition as "N2" and Intellect as "IQ".
Per
Cha
AnM
Str
Sta
Res
Den
Flx
Agl
H/E
IQ
N2
EdL
Wil
No changes necessary. I've always felt that no matter what's in the books, players and referees will abbreviate however they prefer. As long as the abbreviations are readily recognizable in the material we put out, we're fine.
Also, I thought combat was set forth well in the original book, all things considered. There is a simplified combat checklist already; if all you're suggesting is that it appear earlier as well as in the combat chapter . . . well, I guess that can't hurt.
I'll go with your abbreviations although I'm not sure that MV has reached the level of a 'fixed standard' yet so those two could be changed. And a set of abbreviations endorsed would be of use.
Rule of Eight--no more than eight steps in a process at least at the easy levels. I'm suggesting a separate chapter....a Chapter One: Beginning the Game. Later you can go into more detail in Chapter Three: Combat In Depth.
The 'Simplified' Checklist is 12 long.
I think the RoE is 7-8 actually, and I'm guessing this is based on the seven digit phone code research. Phone companies found that the average person can remember seven digits, especially if its broken up into chunks.